With that concern in mind, in March I began to write these memoirs. Paper being dear, we were too poor to buy the vast quantity necessary to complete them, thus I began to compose these pages on the empty leaves—the versos—of correspondence I had saved from old friends. When a publisher peruses these lines, were he to lift the paper to the light, he would read the letters to me from a number of sources who are rather high in the instep—among them the Duchess of Devonshire and the Duke of Clarence.
On April 5, as I sat propped up by bolsters in my bed, reading the Morning Post’s report that I was penning my memoirs, and had gotten so far as the chapters relating to my liaison with Florizel (who else but I would have provided that puff), an officer of the law brutally announced his arrival by knocking on my cottage door with such force that the china rattled in the cabinet. Maria had no choice but to admit him.
“Mrs. Robinson?” The newspaper slipped from my crabbed fingers and fluttered to the chilly floor. With the counterpane pulled up to my chin, I fearfully nodded in the affirmative.
“You are under arrest in the king’s name, for the crime of undischarged debts.”
Had I been struck by a bolt of lightning I should not have been paler and more petrified.
“I?” Suddenly, I was jolted back to the nightmares of years previous; my fifteen months in the Fleet with Mr. Robinson, the time when my carriage had been “touched” in 1781, and three years later, when my possessions were auctioned off by the sheriff of Middlesex.
Maria and I had been quite fastidious with our accounts. And in any event, everyone from the Prince of Wales to the nobility to half the gentry lived on credit.
“How much does my mother owe?” Maria challenged the man. She was nearly his height, and did not seem to fear him in the slightest.
“Sixty-three pounds,” replied the officer of the law.
“Sixty-three pounds? Is that all? But she is owed two hundred and fifty. By none other than the Prince of Wales, who is once again remiss in the timeliness of his payments. Do you not know whom you address, sir?” Maria’s eyes sparked like flint. “My mother is a celebrated authoress.”
“Then she should have no trouble discharging her obligations.”
My deepest fears had been realized. They now stood before my eyes, armed and nearly six feet tall. “I should die in debtors’ prison! These days I cannot even get out of bed and walk to the sitting room. To reach the commode is a Herculean labor.”
“Well, you have my sincerest apologies, madam, but I’ll have to bring you to the sheriff nonetheless.” The officer shifted from foot to foot, uneasy at arresting an apparent invalid.
The indignity of being borne out of my home in chains, no better than a convict, surpasses the ability of my quill. I would not be carried in a chair; I refused. Thus I walked, slowly and mournfully, as if attending my own funeral. My ankles had grown thick and puffy, filled with fluid, the doctor told me, which rendered ambulation all the more painful.
My direst nightmares, those that for years had deprived me of the balm of sleep, now manifested themselves in the reality of captivity.
The sheriff was kind to me, and embarrassed at the position demanded by the exigencies of his office. “I would you had been compelled simply to remain within your cottage until your debts are discharged,” he said, as he slid the bar and turned the iron key in the heavy lock. The sound chilled me, reverberating through my limbs.
“Sir, I cannot concur more. There are times when for lack of mobility I am confined to my home indefinitely. And,” I added, glancing at my hands and legs, so affect by rheumatoid complaints, “my own body is prison enough.”
“If it’s any consolation to you, Mrs. Robinson, and if I may be so bold to say so, your face is still lovely as ever it was.” He allowed that he had seen me on the stage, yet had never read any of my writing. “I’m not much for the poetical works,” he admitted, “but my wife is a novel fancier. I’m certain she’s read one or two of your books.”
I tried to make myself comfortable on the straw pallet that was to serve as my bed until such time as I could scrape up sixty-three pounds and secure my release. I needed a chamber pot, and was mortified that I should be impelled to relieve myself absent one iota of privacy.
Maria had accompanied me to the little jail in Old Windsor, but I insisted she return to Englefield Cottage. Why should she suffer my deprivations as well?
Her argument was the same as mine had been more than a quarter century earlier when I had voluntarily joined my husband in the Fleet: that family must stick together.
But I wouldn’t hear of it and sent Maria home. Not only would she be more comfortable there than in a cell no larger than my wardrobe room, but from the cottage she could coordinate our campaign for my release.
She visited me daily, bringing me roast meats, cheese and bread, bottles of wine, and sheets of composition paper.
I could have walked, or rather hobbled, away from the debt; I was still married to Tom Robinson, which would make my financial obligations my husband’s legal responsibility. But I would not take that road, though it might have been easier than suffering an incarceration in my constrained condition. We had no household together, and the debts were my own. Though the law was on my side, my conscience would not permit me to seek him out
